1. Technical Field
The present invention is directed toward telephones, and more particularly toward two way picture phones.
2. Background Art
Communication devices have typically included audio communications and, occasionally, video communications as well. For example, picture phones have been available for quite some time, and commonly used in video conferencing. In such applications, a reasonably large video screen or display (greater than 4 inches) is available, with the received (remote) picture displayed on the screen and the picture being transmitted shown in a small corner of the display. In such applications, the camera is generally fixed, so that the user can calibrate the picture (that is, properly aim the camera) by viewing what the camera is capturing on his own display and then adjusting the camera position and settings until his own display shows that the camera is capturing what is sought to be captured. In that case, the user can change his own display to view only the received picture in an two way communication (turning off the portion of his display which shows what his own camera is capturing) and still feel assured that his camera is capturing what he intends to transmit to the other party as the communication progresses.
Particularly when such communications are used with portable devices, however, such operation is either impossible or inadequate. That is, such devices are typically required to have much smaller displays (e.g., an LCD screen most likely less than 2 inches diagonally) due to the small size of the device itself. Such a small screen size makes it impractical to display the picture being transmitted in a corner, as it will be either very small or will unacceptably block too much of the received picture. Further, since such devices are typically hand held and the user is frequently moving, the device is also constantly moving as is the camera included therein, making it difficult to continually ensure that the picture being captured is what the person wants to have captured. Of course, this then makes it particularly important that the person using the device have some way to tell that, especially since the user""s focus will be on the received picture and may lose track of the fact that he is also transmitting a picture.
The present invention is directed toward overcoming one or more of the problems set forth above.
In one aspect of the present invention, a communication device is provided, including a camera adapted to capture a picture, a transceiver adapted to receive a picture from a remote device and to transmit the picture captured by the camera, a processor adapted to recognize an object in the local picture and generate a position indicator of the object, and a video display adapted to display both the received remote picture and the position indicator, the position indicator being displayed on the video display to indicate the location of the local picture object.
In a preferred form of this aspect of the invention, the captured picture has a boundary about its object, and the position indicator is a frame for the captured picture corresponding to the boundary, where the video display displays the captured picture frame in a position corresponding to the location of the object with the video display. In a further preferred form the object is the person using the communication device.
In another preferred form of this aspect of the invention, the captured picture object is recognized by motion of the object in the captured picture. In still another preferred form, the captured picture object has a known contour and the processor is adapted to recognize the object by recognizing that known contour.
In still another preferred form, the device is a telephone, particularly a cellular telephone.
In another aspect of the present invention, a method of indicating the proper orientation of a local camera in a two way video communication involving a received remote picture and a transmitted local picture is provided, including the steps of (1) displaying the remote picture on a local video display, (2) recognizing an object in the local camera picture, and (3) displaying a position indicator on the video display corresponding to the position of the object within the boundary of the local picture.
In a preferred form of this aspect of the invention, the displaying steps occur continuously with the remote picture and the position indicator displayed on the local video display simultaneously.
In another preferred form, the remote picture is shown on substantially the entirety of the video display and the position indicator is oriented based on generally corresponding boundaries of the remote and local pictures.
It is an object of the invention to provide a video communication device which may be reliably and easily used to adequately view received pictures and to transmit adequate pictures as well.